Ian Hardacre

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Third round of the PDI Trophy 2020-21 Competition

By Ian Hardacre

This was the third round of the PDI Trophy Competition at Farnborough Camera Club. This was another open round and two images were permitted.

On guard

In the last session of the dance workshop Kate used a light sabre to great effect with a background of backlit mist.

Judge’s comments
A model against a red background with I think stage smoke, now whether you did this in your own studio or it was at a commercial studio, doesn’t matter, it is what you have presented at the time

The lighting is from the left but there is sufficient being reflected back onto her face that so that the right hand of her face as you look at here has still got light and detail, [there are] catch lights in the eyes

I like the diagonal of the light wand

I do wonder whether you need all that space to the left but then that would have brought her back to being more central and maybe that is not what you wanted

But it is a powerful image of this girl looking to be a space age warrior – I’ll hold it back

Hitting the note

Our visit to Nidd Hall to see the Flyrights was our last live event in 2020 due to COVID-19. This image was one of the individuals of the Flyrights concentrating on hitting the notes.

Judge’s comments
Mono photo of this singer, only you know if it is an improvement on the original colour image

A lot of images of singers are given the mono treatment and sometimes they are an improvement and sometimes they are not

I did find the slightly out of focus hand a distraction , if you wanted to take the photo in this particular pose then I suggest a slightly smaller aperture to give a slightly broader depth of field or you could have waited until he had finished that note and quite often they pull the microphone away from their mouth and face and then you would have had more of his face and maybe then the microphone just a little bit farther away

The scores

There were 40 images in this round in the Advanced Division.

‘On guard’ scored 9 and ‘Hitting the note’ scored 7.5.

The original images

‘On guard’:


This image was shot at ISO100, 35mm, f/5.6 at 1/40 sec.

‘Hitting the note’:

This image was shot at ISO 12,800 105mm f/8.0 at 1/100sec